On 1 August 2002, Jay S. Bybee (the Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice) provided a classified legal opinion, headed Interrogation of al Qaeda Operative [e.g., Abu Zubaydah], to John Rizzo (the chief legal officer at the CIA) that concluded that the techniques proposed to be used against the detainee would not violate the prohibition on torture. CIA records show that CIA Headquarters informed the officers at GREEN of this approval to use torture on 3 August 2002. The next day, Abu Zubaydah began to be tortured on a near 24-hour-per-day basis, using the full range of approved “enhanced interrogation techniques”. CIA records document that:

After Abu Zubaydah had been in complete isolation for 47 days, the most aggressive interrogation phase began at approximately 11:50 AM on August 4, 2002. Security personnel entered the cell, shackled and hooded Abu Zubaydah, and removed his towel (Abu Zubaydah was then naked). Without asking any questions, the interrogators placed a rolled towel around his neck as a collar, and backed him up into the cell wall (an interrogator later acknowledged the collar was used to slam Abu Zubaydah against a concrete wall). The interrogators then removed the hood, performed an attention grab, and had Abu Zubaydah watch while a large confinement box was brought into the cell and laid on the floor. A cable states Abu Zubaydah "was unhooded and the large confinement box was carried into the interrogation room and paced [sic] on the floor so as to appear as a coffin." The interrogators then demanded detailed and verifiable information on terrorist operations planned against the United States, including the names, phone numbers, email addresses, weapon caches, and safe houses of anyone involved. CIA records describe Abu Zubaydah as appearing apprehensive. Each time Abu Zubaydah denied having additional information, the interrogators would perform a facial slap or face grab. At approximately 6:20 PM, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded for the first time. Over a two-and-a-half-hour period, Abu Zubaydah coughed, vomited, and had "involuntary spasms of the torso and extremities" during waterboarding. Detention site personnel noted that "throughout the process [Abu Zubaydah] was asked and given the opportunity to respond to questions about threats" to the United States, but Abu Zubaydah continued to maintain that he did not have any additional information to provide. In an email to OMS leadership entitled, "So it begins," a medical officer wrote:

"The sessions accelerated rapidly progressing quickly to the water board after large box, walling, and small box periods. [Abu Zubaydah] seems very resistant to the water board. Longest time with the cloth over his face so far has been 17 seconds. This is sure to increase shortly. NO useful information so far....He did vomit a couple of times during the water board with some beans and rice. It's been 10 hours since he ate so this is surprising and disturbing. We plan to only feed Ensure for a while now. I'm head[ing] back for another water board session."

The use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques— including "walling, attention grasps, slapping, facial hold, stress positions, cramped confinement, white noise and sleep deprivation"—continued in "varying combinations, 24 hours a day" for 17 straight days, through August 20, 2002. When Abu Zubaydah was left alone during this period, he was placed in a stress position, left on the waterboard with a cloth over his face, or locked in one of two confinement boxes. According to the cables, Abu Zubaydah was also subjected to the waterboard "2-4 times a day... with multiple iterations of the watering cycle during each application."

This account of Zubaydah’s torture, documented in CIA records, matches closely with his own testimony, provided to the ICRC.

During nearly three weeks of constant torture, Abu Zubaydah spent more than 11 days in the coffin-sized box, and 29 hours in the smaller confinement box, just 21 inches wide, 2.5 feet deep and 2.5 feet high. Throughout, Zubaydah “cried, begged, pleaded and whimpered”, and at times became “hysterical and distressed to the level that he was unable to effectively communicate." Waterboarding sessions "resulted in immediate fluid intake and involuntary leg, chest and arm spasms" and "hysterical pleas." In at least one waterboarding session, Abu Zubaydah "became completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth."

The interrogation and torture sessions were videotaped by the CIA, and 92 tapes were produced of Abu Zubaydah’s treatment (including 12 which filmed the use of the EITs). The CIA’s legal team in the US reviewed the tapes in November and December 2002, and found them to reflect the written account provided by the interrogation team. However, the CIA’s Inspector General investigation also reviewed the tapes, and compared them to the other records of Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation. In doing so, he found that Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded on at least 83 separate occasions during August 2002, and that the manner in which the technique was applied was in contravention of the DoJ’s August 2002 legal opinion. Specifically, the interrogators ‘continuously applied large volumes of water’, rather than the limited application authorised by the DoJ (which was that water was to be applied from ‘a canteen cup or small watering can’ for just 20-40 seconds). According to a separate investigation by the DoJ, one of the tapes also had an interrogator verbally threaten Abu Zubaydah: ‘If one child dies in America, and I find out you knew something about it, I will personally cut your mother’s throat.’ In addition, the Inspector General found that there was also a 21-hour gap in the taped record, which included two waterboard sessions. The tapes themselves were destroyed by the CIA in November 2005, in an act which was the focus of a subsequent criminal investigation in 2008-2009.

On 22 September 2003, Zubaydah was transferred once again, this time with the other ‘High-Value Detainees’ (HVDs) still held in Poland as the site was cleared and closed. These detainees were moved onboard the CIA-owned Boeing 737 with registration number N313P, which flew an extended circuit visiting several secret prison locations: Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, Morocco and Guantanamo Bay. From Poland, some detainees (Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and Walid bin Attash) were dropped off in Romania, others (Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Ramzi bin al-Shibh) were picked up from Morocco, and along with Abu Zubaydah and Mustafa al-Hawsawi were taken to a secret CIA detention site alongside the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Click here for our analysis of the flight data and documentation associated with Abu Zubaydah’s rendition from Poland to Guantanamo Bay.

Abu Zubaydah and the other HVDs were held at the CIA site in Guantanamo Bay for six months. However, following the US Supreme Court decision that it would hear the cases of a number of Guantanamo detainees, consolidated as Rasul v Bush, aimed at challenging the legality of their detention, the CIA feared that US courts would begin to assert a hold over the Agency’s most-prized detainees, and that details of the CIA’s rendition and secret detention program would begin to emerge. As a result, in March and April 2004 those HVDs that had been secretly held in the CIA facility at Guantanamo, including Abu Zubaydah, were rendered back out of the island and distributed among numerous black sites around the world. There are two flights in particular that appear to have been rendition flights out of Guantanamo Bay during this time, both made by the privately-owned Gulfstream IV jet with registration number N85VM, which had been contracted as part of the CIA’s overall outsourcing of some elements of the rendition programme.

• Click here to read our analysis of the flight data and documentation associated with the March 2004 flight by N85VM from Guantanamo Bay to Morocco
• Click here to read our analysis of the flight data and documentation associated with the April 2004 flight by N85VM from Guantanamo Bay to Romania and then Morocco

According to his legal team’s submission to the European Court of Human Rights, in his case against Lithuania, Abu Zubaydah is likely to have been onboard the 27 March 2004 flight from Guantanamo Bay to Morocco, where he was detained for a further 11 months. Whereas some of the HVDs held with Zubaydah in Morocco at this time, such as Ramzi bin al-Shibh, were later moved to Romania, his legal team are convinced that he was sent on to Lithuania during February 2005. Indeed, flight data confirms that two flights by aircraft contracted as part of the CIA’s outsourced elements of the rendition programme flew between Morocco and Lithuania in February 2005: on 17 February, the privately-owned Boeing 727 with registration N724CL flew from Morocco to Jordan and then onto Lithuania; while the very next day, on 18 February, the privately-owned Boeing 737 with registration N787WH flew from Morocco to Romania, and then onto Lithuania.

• Click here to read our analysis of the flight data and documentation associated with the 17 February 2005 flight by N724CL from Morocco to Lithuania (via Jordan)
• Click here to read our analysis of the flight data and documentation associated with the 18 February 2005 flight by N787WH from Morocco to Lithuania (via Romania)

Nothing specific is known about Abu Zubaydah’s detention in Lithuania, although it would have been within the site known as Project 2, a former horse-riding school 15 miles from Vilnius. Lithuanian and US officials have described the facility to ABC News:

The riding academy originally consisted of an indoor riding area with a red metallic roof, a stable and a cafe. The CIA built a thick concrete wall inside the riding area. Behind the wall, it built what one Lithuanian source called ‘a building within a building’. On a series of thick concrete pads, it installed what a source called ‘prefabricated pods’ to house prisoners, each separated from the other by five or six feet. Each pod included a shower, a bed, and a toilet. Separate cells were constructed for interrogations. The CIA converted much of the rest of the building into garage space. Intelligence officers working at the prison were housed next door in the converted stable, raising the roof to add space. Electrical power for both structures was provided by a 2003 Caterpillar autonomous generator. All the electrical outlets in the renovated structure were 110 volts, meaning they were designed for American appliances.

Some or all of those that were taken to the CIA’s black site in Lithuania - including Abu Zubaydah - were then likely to have been moved to either Egypt or Afghanistan in March 2006, onboard the one possible rendition circuit out of the country identified thus far. This circuit involved two privately-owned aircraft, contracted by the CIA through its prime contract with DynCorp for support services for the renditions programme. The first of these aircraft, the Boeing 737 with registration number N733MA, flew from Lithuania to Egypt, where it met for under an hour with the second aircraft, another Boeing 737 with registration number N740EH. This second aircraft then flew from Egypt to Afghanistan, completing a possible disguised detainee transfer, Lithuania-Afghanistan. Click here to access our analysis of the flight data and associated documentation relating to this possible rendition of HVDs between Lithuania, Egypt and Afghanistan in March 2006.

The fate and whereabouts of Abu Zubaydah after his rendition out of Lithuania and before his transfer to Guantanamo Bay six months later remain unclear. Along with other HVDs, he may well have been held in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, although there is little in the way of concrete evidence either way. Click here for further analysis of where the HVDs - including Abu Zubaydah - may have been held during 2005-2006, before they were transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

CIA records show that Abu Zubaydah was transferred out of the CIA’s secret prison network and into US military detention in Guantánamo Bay on 5 September 2006, alongside the other HVDs in custody at that time (all of whom appear to have been transferred to Guantánamo Bay on 4 September or 5 September 2006). This final transfer was announced by President Bush two days later, as part of a wider disclosure about the CIA’s use of secret prisons.

Abu Zubaydah remains detained in Guantanamo Bay.